When we were in Germany, we rented a car for three weeks. Driving in those countries is different than driving in western Canada. There are roads every few kilometers and the maps needed to negotiate the roads is about the size of a small set of encyclopedias. My brother has a GPS unit for Europe and he loaned it to me and it worked very well. We called it Peggy Sue because she spoke to us in a woman’s voice. We asked her questions, like, “can you show us the way to Innsbruck?” and she told us each step of the way - which turns to make and how far the next turn was and even when we arrived. If we made a mistake, she said, “recalculating” which let us know that we had made a mistake, but then she told us how to correct the error we had made. One time I asked her to tell me where the nearest gas station was and she directed us right to it. She was wonderful and we depended on her to get us around and she always got us where we wanted to go.
There are times when I feel like I had more of a relationship with Peggy Sue than I do with God. Peggy Sue spoke to us, told us which path to take and always got us where we wanted to go. Sometimes God’s Word is hard to understand and God seems silent. Is that what God intends?
When we read the Bible, it becomes clear that God has created us for a relationship with Himself.
In the creation account, we learn that when God created human beings, they were created differently than all the rest of creation. They alone were created, as Genesis 1:27,28 says, “in his own image…” One aspect of the image of God is that God exists in relationship. Although there is only one God, God has made Himself known as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Father, Son and Holy Spirit are each a person and although there is a lot of mystery about this, one thing is clear, God exists in relationship. Therefore if we are created in the image of God, we also are created for relationship.
Another way in which we see that God has created us for relationship with Himself is that God speaks. God’s communication with human began in the creation account. We read in Genesis 1:28, “and God said to them…” From the story in the early chapters of Genesis, we continue to see God in relationship with the people He has created. God made a garden and put Adam and Eve in the garden and from what we read in Genesis, we get the impression that He had a relationship with them there. Even after they broke his command not to eat of the tree, he continued to speak with them as we see in Genesis 3:9. The relationship which happened in the garden was not an anomaly, but what we were created for.
God has continued to take the initiative to communicate with human beings. In Genesis 12:1, and in numerous other places, God spoke with Abraham. In Exodus 3:4, we read “God called to him from within the bush, ‘Moses, Moses.’” The story of Moses is another story of God’s communication and is also a story in which God seeks to establish a relationship with His people. Hebrews 1:1,2 brings the whole matter of God’s communication down to us today. There we read, “In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by His Son…” God continues to speak and his clearest and most powerful effort to establish relationship with people is in sending Jesus.
On top of that, the Bible is loaded with relationship imagery. In John 15:5, we are told to “abide in the vine.” Abiding in the vine is a biological image of connection, of relationship. It describes how God wants to relate to us.
In I Corinthians 2:12 we hear language of knowing. It says, “We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us.” Knowing is also relationship imagery. God wants us to know about Him and also to know Him.
Jesus speaks words of wonderful intimacy when he says in John 15:15, “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.”
As we read in Romans 8:15, however, the relationship we have with God is even more than one of friendship, but also one of family. We are called sons and daughters of God and He is our Father. We read, “For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” As if that were not a close enough relationship, we also have many places where our relationship with Jesus is described using the imagery of marriage. He is the bridegroom and we, the church are the bride. We find this imagery in Ephesians 5 and Revelation 21.
Sometimes the silence of God causes us to doubt, but there can be no doubt for there is far too much in Scripture showing that God wants a relationship with us.
On Wednesday of this past week, I heard on the radio that on that day, 47 years ago, they began construction of the Berlin Wall. I remember hearing stories about how that wall separated people from one another.
In Bethlehem, there is a wall which separates Israel from the Palestinian territories. It is higher and longer than the Berlin wall was. We met with people on both sides of the wall who recognize that this also is a wall of separation.
There is another wall, which is not made of concrete and brick, but one which separates nevertheless. It is the wall of separation between us and God. Romans 3:23 says, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…” Even though we have been created for relationship, we cannot know God and are separated from the glory of God because of sin.
In 1989 the Berlin wall began to be demolished and the process toward German reunification began. That has caused major changes for people in Germany and allowed many families to once more be reunited.
In a much more dramatic way, Jesus has broken down the wall which exists between us and God.
Derek Flood writes, “The incarnation is about God's self-revelation of his very being to us relationally. It is about personal self-disclosure for the purpose of bringing us into relationship.”
Two weeks ago, Jonathan spoke on II Corinthians 5, a passage in which we have the language of reconciliation. God has reconciled us to himself. He has broken down the wall. He has made friends with us again. He has crossed the barrier and made it possible for us to be in a relationship with Him.
As a result, the new reality is, as I John 1:3b says, “…our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.”
So, we have been created for relationship with God. We have been re-created for relationship with God. This means that being a Christian is being a person in relationship with God. What does it mean to speak of being a Christian in terms of a relationship with God?
Some Christians know God, but feel that He is distant. They believe the right things and do good things, but don’t really think of God as someone with whom they have a personal relationship. To some, intimacy with God sounds great, but they don’t personally experience it as a daily reality. And then there are others who know God in a personal relationship and are growing in intimacy with Him.
I don’t know where you are in your relationship, but this morning, I would like to extend an invitation to all of us to grow in our intimacy with God. Do you have a longing for God? That is God drawing you. How can you nurture that relationship?
In the last while, I have been thinking about this and would like to share with you some of the things I am learning about growing in relationship with God.
One of the encouraging things which I am learning is that God is much more interested in a relationship with us than we are with him.
In Psalm 139:1-4 the writer recognizes the deep way in which God knows him when he says, “ O Lord, you have searched me and you know me. 2 You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. 3 You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.4 Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord.” In this Psalm, the writer speaks very personally about the way in which God knows all about us. This isn’t language about the people of God, but about the personal relationship of the Psalmist with God and about God’s deep and personal knowledge about him.
I remember when one of our children called home and told us about a girl he wanted to go out with. He was agonizing over whether he should take a risk and ask her out. He wasn’t sure she was interested in going out with anyone. He wasn’t sure that she liked him and it was torture not knowing if she would be interested. We encouraged him to take a risk and things worked out rather well because today she is his wife.
If we have any doubts in our mind about whether God is interested in us, likes us, wants a relationship with us, we can put those doubts right out of our mind. God takes the initiative in our relationship with him. In fact, John 6:44 says, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him…” If we have an interest in God, it is God who has put it there.
It is important that we trust that God is truly interested in us. If we doubt His interest in us, we cut ourselves off from relationship. If we believe His interest in us, we open ourselves up to relationship.
One of the fundamental aspects of relationship is communication. Have you ever had a conversation with someone and you weren’t sure they wanted to see you or be with you? What a difficult conversation! It is usually hard to sustain such a conversation for very long. If we know that God desires a relationship with us, we know that we can speak to Him and that He is listening.
The Bible repeatedly invites us to “seek the Lord.” Psalm 105:4 says, “Look to the Lord and his strength; seek his face always.” Isaiah 55:6 says, “Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near.” We know that He is near and so we are able to call upon Him.
There are two things which we expect of a conversation with a friend. We expect it to be an open conversation and we expect it to occur regularly. Since God is interested in us and since God is listening as a friend, we can have exactly those kind of conversations with Him. We can speak to him openly. Are you rejoicing? Tell God. Are you confused? Talk to God about it. Are you angry at God? Let Him know. What is the point of hiding from God what He knows is there? It is like the child playing hide and seek who thinks that if her eyes are covered, you don’t know where she is. The other invitation is to speak to him regularly. When people are really good friends, they don’t always talk to each other, but they do communicate regularly and they don’t take each other for granted. Since God desires relationship with us, if we want to live in relationship with Him, we need to talk to Him regularly.
The thing which is probably the most unusual thing for us, the thing we are not used to is that communication also involves listening to God. Friends not only speak to each other, but also listen to each other.
I hope that we have established that God is interested in us and that He listens when we speak to Him, but we also need to recognize that God speaks to us. I don’t know why we have a hard time accepting that God also speaks to us because Scripture is full promises that God is speaking to us. In John 10, Jesus is presented as the good shepherd and in verse 27 he says, “My sheep listen to my voice…” In John 16:12-13 Jesus says to His disciples, “I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.” Romans 8:16 reveals how God’s Spirit speaks to our Spirit when Paul says, “The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.”
How does God speak to us?
Have you ever had a bad conscience when you did something wrong? That may well be God speaking to you because the Spirit of God convicts us of sin as we read in John 16:8-11.
The most objective communication which God has with us is through His Word. Psalm 119:105 reminds us, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path.” However, we need to be careful how we read that word. We need to read it accurately, in context and allowing it to speak as God intends it to speak. However, we also need to allow it to speak not only to our minds, but also to our hearts. In the book, “Can You Hear Me,” Brad Jersak remarks that Scripture cannot be “mere data that fills the head without penetrating the heart.” (Jersak p. 38)
The Bible is also quite clear that God speaks through prophets. It is interesting that we accept Jeremiah and Daniel as prophets through whom God speaks, but are somewhat more reluctant about recognizing that God still speaks through people whom He has given the gift of prophecy. Paul warns us in I Thessalonians 5:19 – 21, “Do not put out the Spirit’s fire; 20 do not treat prophecies with contempt. 21 Test everything. Hold on to the good.” The words of prophets need to be tested, but we often stop far short of testing their words and dismiss them before we even listen to see if what they are saying comes from God.
God also speaks to us within our own hearts. In I Kings 19, after Elijah had had his great victory over the Baal prophets, he fled because he was afraid that he was the only one in all of the nation of Israel who was faithful to God. He fled to a mountain wilderness and there God met him. God promised him an encounter and Elijah hid in the mountain waiting for God to show up. He observed a great and powerful wind, but God was not in the wind. He experienced a great earthquake, but God was not in it. He saw a fire, but God was not in the fire. Finally, when all the noise had subsided, he waited and in the silence, he heard the still small voice of God. I believe that one of the problems we have is that we expect God to speak in great ways and we expect him to show Himself in the powerful and spectacular. Sometimes he does that, but He also speaks to us in the still small voice.
God has created us for relationship. God takes the initiative to relate to us. God speaks to us, but…are we listening?
When Jesus was on the mount of transfiguration, God spoke to those assembled there, which included three of his disciples and said in Matthew 17:5, “listen to Him.” Are we listening?
One of the last things I did on the sabbatical was spend time in prayer and listening to God and it was a wonderful experience. God spoke to me, encouraging me in my walk with Him. I listened as I tried to understand what I needed to do as I returned to work and I believe that God gave me guidance. One of the blessings was that I had time to sit and listen, and as I have returned home, I have tried to develop better habits of listening to God. Through that experience, I have been reminded that God is speaking and that I need to take the time to listen.
In order to listen to God, we need to take up the posture of a listener.
1. We need to have focused attention. We need to get rid of all the distracting thoughts and direct our complete attention to God. Listening to God requires silence. If the noises in our heads and around us are so great that we can’t hear God, it will be difficult to listen to Him. Listening to God requires a space which allows us to hear above the noise of the world.
2. We need to have a love longing. Jersak says in his book, “If we treat God as an impersonal force to be manipulated(magic) or merely as a deeper part of our ‘self’ to be discovered (enlightenment), we might access some level of psychic power or information, but we will not attain Him. The heart that knows God intimately is the one that loves him deeply and thirsts for his presence.” Jersak p. 74. Remember last week I spoke of God being our treasure. If He is our treasure, our hearts will be much more open to hearing Him.
3. Listening to God involves hearing Scripture as a living Word. God’s Word must always be interpreted within its intended meaning, but it is not only a static book, but a Word which continues to speak to us today. We need to learn to listen to God to hear what He is saying each day. I would like to invite you to a different way of listening to God. I would like to encourage you to sit down with your Bible. Begin in an attitude of prayer and open your heart to listening to God. Read a passage of scripture slowly several times. Don’t try to analyze it or evaluate the connections between its parts. Don’t read a commentary on it. Read it with the recognition that this is the living Word of God and that God has a word for you in it. Listen to what God is saying to you and write down His message to you. If you want a specific passage with which to do this, although many will do, I would suggest John 15:1-9. I have been reading the Bible this way and it has been very encouraging to hear what God is saying.
4. The fourth attitude is that of humble waiting. If God’s voice isn’t heard, simply abide in Him and rest in Him. Jersak says, “listening prayer should be more like the infant’s enjoyment of nursing than an exercise in spiritual constipation!” Jersak p. 75
If God is our treasure, a natural accompaniment to that is living in relationship to Him, speaking to Him and listening to Him.
What is your relationship with God like? Is it cold and impersonal or is it growing in intimacy. My prayer for myself and for each one of you is that it will be a relationship that will grow in intimacy.
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